Sky high

Alright, this one was too good not to share, but I'm gonna have make it quick... There are 2 types of wind turbines used by blueEnergy, tilt up and ladder-style (not the technical names). Anyway, one of them you service by tilting the entire pole down to the ground and doing repairs there. The other, you climb 100ft into the air and lower the turbine down. The second type was getting serviced yesterday, which sparked a burning desire to hike up the tower and get a good look around. So, after half jokingly suggesting that I'd like to climb up, Stephanie and I found ourselves strapped into harnesses and slowly making my way up the metal framework to the swaying platform above. Despite the rather incredulous stares from the workshop boys, we made it all the way up and thoroughly enjoyed the view. Being that high up offered a stunning panorama of all of Bluefields, the Corn Islands and more. Quite a treat for a Friday afternoon.

Nueva Oficina

The past week was a whirlwind of sawdust, paint chips, cement and gravel. Over the course of 9 days, including a marathon workday on Sunday til 12:30am, we (the workers and various volunteers) managed to transform a rundown, hornet infested and filthy classroom into a pristine new office and conference room. We even completed a full kitchenette and bathroom along with all new grates over the windows and doors (welded into the reinforced concrete structure) and all new furniture. The Desks in particular were an interesting challenge. After starting with the conference tables and discovering that it's impossible to buy dry wood here, I had to completely re-design every component to be made entirely out of plywood. Hence, the desks were each designed to use exactly one 4'x 8' sheet of plywood without any wasted cuts. In addition, they were designed to be transportable and therefore come apart into 2 pieces. Anyway, this is all a much longer story, but I'm way behind on everything else, so I'll let a few pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Here's what it looked like before we got started:






And here's where we're at today:

Beautiful Day

Yesterday was a wonderful experience, it had just a little bit of everything and not too much of anything. The day started with a little home improvement project of building a spice rack for the kitchen. This is something that has been on my mind since the first night I cooked here. Up until yesterday, if you wanted to use any spices, you had to lean all the way over the stove (which was usually on by the time you remembered you needed spices), and struggle to reach the tantilizing jars that stayed mysteriously just beyond your reach, often necessitating the use of a large ladle or other object to extend your reach. Having decided to take the day off from working since I didn't get much of a break last week, Julie and I opted to attempt to remedy the spice situation.

It was lovely morning of interminable rain that turned the ground to mud and brought the temperature down to a reasonable level. As Julie and I sat around sanding our wood I watched our neighbor cut her grass with a machete in the pouring rain, completely unperturbed by the fact that she was drenched to the bone. After laborously hacking through a board with a handsaw only to end up with a crooked, slanting edge, we opted to swallow our collective pride and go ask the construction workers over at G's house to do a couple quick cuts with the circular saw. This was a fun little adventure since it meant running across the mud soaked yard, dodging the laundry that was getting a second rinse in the rain, and attempting to elegantly slide down the slick, wet slope that led to G's front porch. By the second go round, we had already ditched our shoes and were making no pretenses to stay dry. Since it was still a warm day, there was little to be concerned with and we had a ball running back and forth for tools and borrowed supplies.

A few hours later, we were just putting on the finishing touches and getting ready to mount our new creation in it's resting place above the stove when the lights went out and we had to halt work on account of there being no electricity to power our drill. Luckily, it was just about lunchtime anyway, so we took a break, had some food and waited for the power to come back on. It's really kind of interesting because, unlike power cuts in the States, life just goes on when the lights go out. People keep cooking, flashlights are turned on, and most things continue as normal. We even have a backup battery bank for the office, so those who choose to can continue working as long as the power's not out for too long. In any case, as soon as the power was up and running again, at least an hour after it cut out, we climbed up on the counters and put our masterpiece in place. It wasn't quite a perfect fit, but it works wonders and looks relatively pleasing. =) All in all, not a bad way to spend the morning.

In the afternoon, Lynn baked a fabulous chocolate cake with homemade chocolate icing and she, David, Julie and I set out across town to deliver the birthday surprise to a friend of Julie's. We piled in to the cab, picked up some strawberry icecream and made our way all the way across town to 'Loma Fresca' or the 'cool hill' neighborhood for the English speakers in the crowd. After negotiating a price to be driven all the way down the rutted dirt path that leads to the nicest homes in town, we were happily bouncing along with icecream and cake in hand. When we arrived, I was thrilled to see that the home we were to go relax in for a bit was a beautiful wooden structure raised on stilts. As we were ushered in and up the stairs, we found ourselves on a gorgeous covered veranda overlooking the calm, gray lagoon. We passed a few delightful hours eating sweets, chatting and staring out across the steel gray water through a mist of fine rain. As the storms subsided, we watched tiny fishing boats and 2 man pangas (dugout canoes) make their way out across the bay. For the first time since the boat ride into Bluefields, I also got to see a bit of wildlife. There was a regal little egret who strutted around just below the deck, a pair of finches with bright yellow breasts and a chorus of other birds. For the first time in a long while, we were able to enjoy the sounds of nature without the blaring of taxis, barking of dogs and chorus of other noises that are the background to nearly every day.

Refreshed and happy, we said our goodbyes and wound our way back to casa blueEnergy. When we arrived, we were greeted by Guillaume who had just returned from Managua with Christian, a former volunteer who has returned for a few months of work, and Phillip, a former student of his who has come down to help out for a short time. With the whole family home complete with new additions, it was time for a trip to the corner store for beer and flor de caña to start off the night. We passed a few hours chatting while dinner was in the oven and then moved over to the table for slightly more serious discussions. As soon as the food was gone, and the precious wine (which we can't buy here) had been drunk, Guillaume took the opportunity to fill us all in on a myriad of new and old developments that will reshape many of our projects and directions in the near future.

Thoroughly saturated with information, most people drifted off to bed, but a few hearty survivors, myself included, decided that such a serious discussion could only be followed by a night at Four Brothers. Rallying the troupes, we squashed into a taxi and headed off for a night of dancing.

Hours later and happily exhausted, we made our way home and I fell into bed happy with the fullness of the day.

Change of Pace

Since coming back to Bluefields life has taken on something resembling a routine. My project for the week has been to organize (aka 'do' in this country) cleaning out an unused INATEC classroom and converting it to an office for blueEnergy. This would at first glance appear to be a simple task, but as I am quickly discovering, nothing is ever simple. That said, it has been a relatively painless process to date and we are progressing much faster then I dared to hope.

The first major obstacle in beginning our renovation was to acquire a key to the room in question. This entailed meeting with the director of the IPCC campus (who is notoriously useless and loves to drag his feet). Our meeting was no exception to his general demeanor. First, he was "in a meeting" all day for 2 days and completely inaccessable. Then he tried to claim that they needed the room for some sort of administrative training sometime in the future, despite having received orders from the head of INATEC to grant us access. Once we got over that argument, he claimed there wasn't a single other locking room on campus where he could store the (unused) typewriters that currently lived in said room and we would have to wait until Guillaume got back on the weekend to discuss storing them. Though not a perfect solution, I managed to divert this argument by feigning fear of my boss's anger and offering to store the typewriters in the adjoining closet until G's return. Only 2 and a half days after we were supposed to start work on the room, I finally had the key in hand! Quite the achievement for Bluefields!

The next step was to empty out all the desks and typewriters and move them to the small closet next door. This was relatively easy until we discovered the plethora of hornets nests that adorned most of the windows and a few of the lights. At first, we managed to work in relative harmony until the stacks of desks begin encroaching upon the hornet's territory. At that point, in a momentary lapse of attention, I reached up to push a desk aside and immediately yelped in pain. Hopping down and running out the door with a sharp pain in my hand, I cursed the horrid insects and nursed my wound. Only, it wouldn't stop throbbing and was quickly getting red and swollen. Seeing what had happened, Ronald assured me that if I simply peed on my hand, it would all go away. A little skeptical, but without many other options and in serious pain, I opted to try this bush remedy. Surprisingly enough, it worked wonders. Only moments later the swelling had subsided and I was able to return to work.
I spent the rest of the day removing louvered glass panels and laborously washing each by hand. This was the first moment that I wished we owned a power washer. It would however, not be the last.

Although I had nearly forgotten about the hornet sting during the day, at night, as I lay in bed I could feel my hand slowly swelling and when I woke I was greeted with an itchy, bloated, bright red fist. Not a great way to start the day. Opting to work on some drawings rather than doing hard labor, I passed the glass washing task onto Juli and spent the day creating working drawings for the desks Felix will begin building shortly. I was greatly excited to see that he had already started on the tables I had assigned to him the day before, but my excitement was bit premature. By lunch time, Felix had already come to inform me that the wood we had purchased was still wet and would need at least a week to dry before any joints could be milled. Disappointed, but still enthusiastic, I turned my attention to other tasks.

One of the nice things about this week has been that I moved my office over to the shop, which means I actually get to leave the house. Each morning I walk through the streets and up the hill to the INATEC campus and our workshop. I spend the day either working along side the workshop boys or on the computer creating drawings. At lunchtime, we all hike back over the house for a big meal of rice, beans and some sort of meat before returning to work in the afternoon. It's been wonderful getting a chance to interact with all the local workers rather than being stuck in the tiny little office most people work in at the house.

Another recent alteration that has changed the pace of life is that we have now officially entered the rainy season. Everyday without fail, the skies will open up at least once to release torrents of rain. Unless you've personally experienced a tropical storm, I'm not sure I can properly describe to you the volume of water that rushes from the sky in a single instant. You can literally get drenched to the bone passing from the doorway to the sidewalk. Being wet has simply become a fact of life. If you need to leave the building, you're going to be wet. It doesn't matter how big your umbrella or how thick your raincoat, you're still gonna get wet. Fortunately, it's still relatively hot, so getting wet isn't such a big deal. It's not like a New England storm where you're shivering wet and miserable. Here you're just wet. In any case, the change in weather has brought a change to the pace of life as well. Things move with the rhythm of the rains. If you'd planned to go shopping, but it starts raining, you change your plans. If you know you have to do something outside, you make it happen whenever the skies are clear.

Alright, back to our new office space. Do you remember how I started wishing we had a power washer with the glass? Well, the next time I spent the day working on cleaning up the classroom, it was to scrape the flaking paint throughout the whole room by hand. Power washer would have been helpful. Next, I scrubbed all the walls, again by hand, to get rid of years of bird and bat shit, termite nests, vicious biting ants and other such things. Again, power washer would have been wonderful. Nonetheless, by the end of the week, we managed to get one coat of paint on the back wall and everything else prepped to start painting again on monday. Like I said, quite an achievement for the week. Now we just have to hope that the wood dries enough to finish the furniture and that the paint dries despite the torrential downpours and ridiculous humidity. Keep your fingers crossed and we'll see how it goes.